NEW AGE

This issue chronicles the recent cultural developments concerning "Women's Journey to God," both through new paths outside organized religion and within traditional faiths. The editors give a confusing presentation, emphasizing "bold" and "new," yet the photographs used are of women worshiping around the world in traditional ways, including the lead picture of an Orthodox Christian woman, in babushka, lighting candles. Writer Joan Borysenko says that, even among those staying within older traditions, "Women are reinventing religion by seeking God from the inside out."

U.S. Catholic

January

The magazine goes showbiz, asking Catholic actors how their faith influenced them and supports them. Many see a definite link between the "theater" of liturgy that they encountered as children and their attraction to the stage. Joe Barbara of Another World says his faith helps him with the constant insecurity of auditions.

American Spectator

December/January

This issue tells us more about the "Unborn-Again Bill Bradley." The presidential candidate's journey away from Christian fundamentalism is examined by Paul Sperry, Washington bureau chief of Investor's Business Daily. He says Bradley now "lists his religion simply as 'Protestant.'" The candidate, "who played basketball alongside many blacks, says the racism he saw in fundamentalist churches during 1964's civil rights struggle ... drove him away."

American Prospect

Jan. 3

The magazine confronts the ethical issues of caregiving in a cover piece on "Importing Motherhood: The Global Nanny Chain." Arlie Russell Hochschild examines "right" and "wrong" in a situation not new but now becoming more prevalent in the United States: mothers busy working at the office.

Hochschild, co-director at the Center for Working Families at the University of California, Berkeley, wonders about the "globalization of love," in which "immigrant nannies and au pairs often divert feelings originally directed toward their own children toward their young charges in this country."

One mother from the Philippines is paid $400 a week to mind children in this country. That mother (A) also pays another mother of a lower social position (B) $40 a week to care for A's family back home, and B has her oldest daughter care for B's children. This is the global care chain. The article discusses the care of elderly parents as well. Hochschild finds no easy solutions.

Yoga International

January

This issue considers invocations in a column by Beverley Viljakainen, who says they are often "mistaken" for petitionary prayer. She says they are instead "an acknowledgement of the unseen forces or energies at work in our universe and within ourselves." In discussing specifically the svasti prajabhyah invocation, the health therapist says, "It reminds me that behind all of life's situations ... there is an unknown factor at work ... that we ignore at our peril."